HPA oscillation with aggressive scale-down
A bursty, spiky-traffic API on an HPA that scales on average CPU keeps oscillating: it scales up during a burst, then the autoscaler scales it back down aggressively in the lull, and the next burst hits an under-provisioned fleet that must cold-start pods (each ~30s to ready) — so p99 spikes on every burst and the fleet visibly flaps up and down all day. Steady-state load would be fine with a stable replica count. The HPA was recently retuned to be 'more cost-efficient' with a low target and short stabilization window. How do you triage and mitigate?
What a strong answer looks like
Stop the bleeding first (mitigate), then form hypotheses from real signals. Separate root cause from symptom, communicate status as you go, and close with what prevents a repeat.
0:00 of about 35 min
Which questions mattered is sealed until you submit. Telling you now would just be handing over the edge cases.
Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.